


Together

by SegaBarrett



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, First Meetings, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 06:06:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11269500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Bill encounters a kindred spirit.





	Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ideare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideare/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who, and I make no money from this.

Bill Potts tried her best to close her mouth, thinking of the phrase her foster mother used to tease her with: “If your mouth keeps open like that, you’re going to end up catching flies.”

She was amazed that she hadn’t caught any flies yet, because being around the Doctor was an endless series of things that made her want to leave her mouth swinging open and her eyes staring into the void.

“This is a whole place… this whole place is for people to look for aliens? And it’s been right under our noses… the whole time?” Bill could barely keep her voice level, keep from tripping over everything as it came out of her mouth. “It makes me wonder about everything. I mean, Bigfoot, is he real too? The Loch Ness monster? Can we go back and figure out who Jack the Ripper was and maybe stop all of that? Was Jack the Ripper actually an alien? The possibilities are endless!”

The Doctor looked at her with a gaze she couldn’t quite read – was he indulging her monologue out of affection or exasperation at this point? Sometimes she really could go on, she knew that, but this was all so new, so who wouldn’t have questions? It was only fair. 

“Bill, if I told you half of the things I’ve seen…” he began, and then paused. Bill wondered if he could have literally told her half of the things he had seen – a Time Lord’s life, it seemed, was so very long that even half of this life would take up all of hers to hear about.

She couldn’t respond to that, not really, so she continued to gaze around UNIT with her eyes wide and full of wonder. 

She hadn’t had much of an imagination as a child – too much had happened too early to sweep it away. When she didn’t have any trust that anything was supposed to be there, anything was always going to be there, what was she supposed to do with that?

And now there was the Doctor, and it wasn’t as if he was always going to be there. He was moving through time and he could appear and reappear – usually, people just disappeared from her life and never returned.

Maybe that was what she was meant to do. To vanish off into the stars the way that Heather had.

And there was a place where things went to disappear.

“I’d like to introduce you to someone here at UNIT. I think you might get on very well,” the Doctor told her, and she was snapped out of her thoughts and back into the wondrous place she was walking through.

Suddenly a hand was in hers, and she was shaking it, and maybe then just shaking because she was looking into the brightest brown eyes she had ever seen in her life. Bill was opening her mouth and speaking gibberish that she didn’t even want to remember, just tumbling over each word as if she were back trying to do cartwheels as a girl all over again. 

“What did you say your name was?” Bill asked, and she must have come off as just plan daft, completely daft, because the reason she hadn’t caught the girl’s – the woman’s, really – name was not because she didn’t care or because she was an airhead but because she just couldn’t stop looking into those eyes.

There she was again, falling into eyes. There wasn’t a star in them this time – but there was something else. Maybe an entire galaxy, if Bill really let herself think about it.

The woman chuckled.

“Martha Jones,” she supplied, again, and Bill felt herself blush hard as she stammered her own, seemingly inferior, name in reply.

She mumbled it, almost apologetically, but Martha didn’t seem to notice. Instead, she began showing her around UNIT, explaining what everything was and what everything did. So many gears to keep track of, so many piles of labeled paperwork. Even in a place focused on aliens, it was nothing but paperwork half the time.

“So what are you investigating now?” Bill asked, when the silence got to be too much and she had auditioned and fired at least seven other things to say in her mind. 

“Bigfoot,” Martha replied, and Bill wanted to burst out laughing until she realized that Martha was deadly serious.

She had always wondered whether he was real, after all. Now, she figured she had an answer.

***

Bill had an ache in her foot that she couldn’t quite figure out. How it had gotten there, or even when – was all of the time travel catching up with her at last? She wondered if this was something she should ask the doctor, or perhaps NHS. Maybe it was something no one else could understand.

Well, almost no one else. 

“So… How long have you known the Doctor?”

“It’s kind of a hard question to answer, really,” Martha mused. “I mean, how do you measure time when it comes to him?” She looked away a moment, then back at Bill, putting on a smile that seemed forced in a way. 

What was that about? She had never met anyone else like her, a human who knew the doctor. Was she like her – had they traveled together? Was this what someone looked like when they were done traveling with the Doctor – bitter and unsure?

If so, maybe that was their own loss. Being able to travel through space and time was something that shouldn’t be taken for granted. She remembered just how close she had been to taking Heather’s hand and climbing in with her, letting her lead her through space for all eternity. 

It was a lot better than being alone. After all, Bill needed to have someone to talk to, and the Doctor usually seemed willing to listen to whatever she had to say, even if he didn’t respond to it quite the way she intended – or at all… 

Maybe that was why Martha had that look in her eye. The look like she knew, like she understood the things Bill was thinking.

“It’s true. Time kinda means nothing when you’re what he is, huh?” Bill thought it was stupid rambling the second it came out of her mouth, but to her surprise Martha greeted the words with a smile.

“I used to fancy him, you know,” she whispered conspiratorially, and Bill cocked her head to the side, trying to figure out whether she ought to be disappointed or amazed. “Well, not this him, I mean. He was a lot younger – looked a lot younger? I don’t even know.”

“So the…regeneration thing? That’s how he does it.”

“That’s right. Changes his face and everything.” Martha looked down and began to rearrange items on the desk in front of her, seeming to want to look everywhere except at Bill. “It’s something you’ll learn about him. I mainly only was around the one – makes life easier, I guess. Forgot he was a Time Lord once, though, that was a rough one, that.”

Bill scratched her head and remembered the way he had pretended to be a simple professor for so long. Pretended, however, clearly pretending, though she hadn’t figured him out yet by then.

“Forgot?”

“It’s a long story,” she said simply, “I’ve got a lot of those.”

Bill whispered, “Tell me.”

***

The Doctor must have forgotten about the two of them at some point, must have run off on another adventure without checking behind him to make sure he hadn’t lost anything.

They were like a jangling pair of keys left on a ledge by the door.

Not that it mattered – they were lost in conversation, in reminiscing and looking forward and back, rewinding tapes and peeking to the end of their stories. Maybe it was okay, how they would end. How the world as they knew it and loved it might end. 

Because, in the end, she wouldn’t be alone. And there was UNIT, ever searching, ever trying to find out, ever daring and ever questioning.

And – and Bill thought this as she impulsively jolted out her hand and took the other woman’s, not knowing whether this would turn out to be friendship or love or something that could not fit in either box – and in the end, at the end of the world, Martha was there.

Bring on the future.


End file.
